In a typical world wide web server application, in which a server device provides data to a client device, such as a personal computer, mobile device, etc., data such as web pages are typically cached in their entirety. Each cached web page or data object is assigned a predetermined time to live (TTL).
Typically, to guarantee that a cached page always contains the most recent and relevant content, the TTL is set to the maximum amount of time that a business, or other entity providing the content, is willing to wait before refreshing the cached page. Typically, this time period is seconds or minutes. However, the content on the page may not change very often, and, as a result, the page is regenerated and cached significantly more frequently than needed. Further, if the content is updated before the TTL limit is reached, the cached page will contain stale content.
Therefore, there is a need for a way of efficiently refreshing a cached web page or other data object as soon as content within that page or object is updated.